wikipedia | Operation CHAOS or Operation MHCHAOS was the code name for an American domestic espionage project conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency from 1967 to 1974, established by President Johnson and expanded under President Nixon,
whose mission was to uncover possible foreign influence on domestic
race, anti-war and other protest movements. The operation was launched
under Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) Richard Helms, by chief of counter-intelligence, James Jesus Angleton, and headed by Richard Ober. [1][2] The "MH" designation is to signify the program had a worldwide area of operations.[3]
The CIA began domestic recruiting operations in 1959 in the process of finding Cuban exiles they could use in the campaign against communist Cuba and Fidel Castro. As these operations expanded, the CIA formed a Domestic Operations Division in 1964. In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson requested that the CIA begin its own investigation into domestic dissent—independent of the FBI's ongoing COINTELPRO.[4]
The CIA developed numerous operations targeting domestic dissent,
many operating under the CIA's Office of Security. These included:[2]
- HTLINGUAL – Directed at letters passing between the United States and the then Soviet Union, the program involved the examination of correspondence to and from individuals or organizations placed on a watchlist.
- Project 2 – Directed at infiltration of foreign intelligence targets by agents posing as dissident sympathizers and which, like CHAOS, had placed agents within domestic radical organizations for the purposes of training and establishment of dissident credentials.
- Project MERRIMAC – Designed to infiltrate domestic antiwar and radical organizations thought to pose a threat to security of CIA property and personnel.
- Project RESISTANCE – Worked with college administrators, campus security and local police to identify anti-war activists and political dissidents without any infiltration taking place
- Domestic Contact Service – Focused on collecting foreign intelligence from willing Americans.
When President Nixon came to office in 1969, existing domestic surveillance activities were consolidated into Operation CHAOS.[5]
Operation CHAOS first used CIA stations abroad to report on antiwar
activities of United States citizens traveling abroad, employing methods
such as physical surveillance and electronic eavesdropping, utilizing "liaison services" in maintaining such surveillance. The operations were later expanded to include 60 officers.[3] In 1969, following the expansion, the operation began developing its own network of informants
for the purposes of infiltrating various foreign antiwar groups located
in foreign countries that might have ties to domestic groups.[2]
Eventually, CIA officers expanded the program to include other leftist
or counter-cultural groups with no discernible connection to Vietnam, such as groups operating within the women's liberation movement.[1] The domestic spying of Operation CHAOS also targeted the Israeli embassy, and domestic Jewish groups such as the B'nai B'rith. In order to gather intelligence on the embassy and B'nai B'rith, the CIA purchased a garbage collection company to collect documents that were to be destroyed.[6]
Targets of Operation CHAOS within the antiwar movement included:[5]
- Students for a Democratic Society
- Black Panther Party
- Young Lords
- Women Strike for Peace
- Ramparts Magazine[7]
Officially, reports were to be compiled on "illegal and subversive"
contacts between United States civilian protesters and "foreign
elements" which "might range from casual contacts based merely on mutual
interest to closely controlled channels for party directives." At its
finality, Operation CHAOS contained files on 7,200 Americans, and a
computer index totaling 300,000 civilians and approximately 1,000
groups.[8]
The initial result of investigations lead DCI Richard Helms to advise
then President Johnson on November 15, 1967, that the agency had
uncovered "no evidence of any contact between the most prominent peace
movement leaders and foreign embassies in the U.S. or abroad." Helms
repeated this assessment in 1969.[1] In total 6 reports were compiled for the White House and 34 for cabinet level officials.[2]
